There’s another change in where contaminated wastewater from Juniper Ridge Landfill will be treated.
By the end of October, contaminated wastewater from the Old Town-based landfill will be trucked to Brewer to be treated, Wayne Boyd, general manager at Casella Waste System, said Tuesday.
“We’ve been looking hard to see what other options are, and it would appear that that option is open. We’ve had a door open for treatment in Brewer, and that’s where it will be going for now,” Boyd said during a landfill committee meeting in Old Town on Tuesday.
The wastewater will be treated in Brewer while a proposed off-site PFAS treatment system is being built in Hampden. The water, which is called leachate, is collected at Juniper Ridge after it runs through waste. It’s contaminated by harmful chemicals, including PFAS.
Casella operates the Juniper Ridge Landfill under subsidiary NEWSME Landfill Operations.
Old Town residents questioned why leachate was being treated in Brewer and Hampden after court documents showed that Casella was planning to truck the contaminated water 20 miles instead of treating it at the landfill in Old Town. A PFAS treatment system is a requirement for approval of a proposed 61-acre expansion of Juniper Ridge Landfill, but the public benefit agreement requiring the system does not say where it has to be built.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection approved the expansion late last year, with the requirement of a PFAS treatment system. The expansion is expected to add 11 years to the lifetime of Juniper Ridge, which right now is on track to be at capacity by the end of 2028 or beginning of 2029, Boyd said.
The city of Brewer notified its intent to apply for a permit Tuesday to release 18,000 gallons of treated leachate into the Penobscot River. Details of the application, including where the treatment would occur, were not immediately available Wednesday.
The proposed treatment facility in Hampden would be at the town’s Pine Tree Landfill, which was closed earlier this year, and use technology that Casella has already implemented in Vermont, Boyd said. The technology is called the LEEF System, Boyd said.
Casella officials showed legislators and reporters a proposed location for a treatment facility at Juniper Ridge last year. Boyd did not say why leachate is being treated off site instead.
Leachate is currently being trucked to Nine Dragons Paper in Old Town, where it undergoes basic wastewater treatment. The proposed landfill expansion requires the material to have additional PFAS treatment.
The leachate will be held in a million-gallon tank at the Juniper Ridge Landfill before it’s treated. A similar tank will be used for holding the liquid in Hampden.
Once treated for PFAS, the water will be sent through a local sewer system and sewer treatment plant, Boyd said.
What will happen with the removed leachate is still being decided, Boyd said.
“There’s a couple different thoughts on the residual,” Boyd said.
The only proposed use Boyd shared is that the PFAS may be entombed in concrete blocks and sent back to Juniper Ridge. Technology for other ways the PFAS could be entombed or moved after treatment is still changing and advancing, Boyd said. Casella wants the “latest and greatest” technology available, he said.
Opponents to the landfill expansion have said treating leachate off site would create more environmental and public health risks. Old Town residents Tuesday echoed those concerns and asked Boyd and Lane Gould, landfill manager of the Maine Bureau of General Services, questions about the city’s agreement with the landfill, the safety of trucking leachate and if there are any ways for the landfill to close.
A representative from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was invited to Tuesday’s meeting but did not attend due to the ongoing court cases, Landfill Committee Chair Laura Sanborn said.